Cancer 2.0: I already won; I’m planning to run up the score

Let’s get one thing straight: If Steve Buttry Cancer 2.0 doesn’t come out the way I’m hoping, I don’t want anyone saying I “lost a battle” with cancer. I kicked cancer’s ass back in 1999 and lived a wonderful 15-plus years since my first diagnosis. If my second round doesn’t end as well, I still won.

Cancer 1.0 was in my colon. We caught it early, the surgeon sliced it out and life went on. A second surgery in 2006 cost me another section of colon, as well as my appendix and a bunch of nearby lymph nodes. The lumps in the appendix and lymph nodes that prompted the surgery were benign, and life went on again.

I also had microsurgery in 2005 to remove a basal-cell skin cancer. Call it Cancer 1.1. Not as big a deal as colon cancer, but again, an ass-kicking. Also possibly an indication that I’m fertile soil for tumors.

I’ve lived more than a quarter of my life since the first diagnosis. By the 10th anniversary of the surgery, I was so cancer-free I didn’t even notice the milestone until a few days after it had passed. I won’t say that a semicolon works as well as the full colon, but it didn’t keep me from enjoying life.

I’ve felt more than the usual aches and pains lately, but they raised no concerns initially. I thought a few creaks were part of middle age. Two or three ibuprofen usually kept discomfort at bay. Nov. 14, a Friday afternoon, I came home from work early, complaining of a sharper pain in my back. When the pain was still strong that Saturday, Mimi took me to an urgent care clinic. The doctor there suspected a kidney stone and also diagnosed diabetes. He said I needed to get a CT scan and follow up Monday with my regular doctor. I hadn’t yet visited a Baton Rouge doctor (I had an appointment in December for my physical and planned to set up my next colonoscopy then), but the urgent care doc said I’d be able to get in Monday with an internist at the nearby clinic.

When I was showering that Sunday, I notice swelling under my left armpit. I was unsure whether that was a new development or something I was just now noticing, with greater awareness of my flawed body. I showed the swelling to the doctor the next day. That concerned her more than the diabetes or the possible kidney stone.

I now have a bunch of Baton Rouge docs and they ran a bunch of tests: blood, urine, CT, EKG, colonoscopy, two biopsies. The results: Cancer 2.0. No kidney stone, though.

This cancer is mantle-cell lymphoma, a rare non-Hodgkins cancer that, according to the Lymphoma Research Foundation, most often affects men over the age of 60. I turned 60 in October, about when the first aches were appearing. (More on the name of my disease over on the Hated Yankees blog.)

I have more tests to go and won’t know the exact course of treatment until next week. But I’ll be starting chemotherapy soon, probably later this month. The oncologist and I are confident of successful treatment and a return to good health.

I won’t blog here about Cancer 2.0, beyond this post. I’ll do that on Caring Bridge. If you care to know more, you can follow that story there. I have posted more medical details there today.

But I keep in touch with a lot of friends here, so I wanted to give you this news. I will continue to write about journalism issues here, though my treatment might affect how often I blog. I might post links to some important Caring Bridge updates here, but otherwise I’ll keep this mostly about journalism, as it has always been.

But back to Cancer 2.0. My doctors and I expect me to beat this. But obviously I’m aware of the other possibility. If my death certificate someday lists cancer (whether it’s this lymphoma or something else that becomes 3.0) under “cause,” that’s just a late touchdown to keep me from running up the score.

Here’s some of what I’ve done since I kicked cancer’s ass 15 years ago:

Mimi and I celebrated Joe’s wedding eight years after my first cancer diagnosis.

I toasted Mike and Joe’s marriages to wonderful women (I’m working on my toast for Tom’s wedding to another wonderful woman next October).

I welcomed two granddaughters to the family (girls finally outnumber the boys) and I’ve watched them grow from darling babies into enchanting little girls. I’ve played with them, sung to them, read to them and taken way too many photos of them (Grandpaparazzi!).

I celebrated my 40th wedding anniversary with Mimi (we learned that first diagnosis days after our 25th). That’s more than 5,000 extra days we had together, and I cherish every one. Any strength I might have shown in the face of cancer in 1999 or now is rooted in Mimi. Her faith and determination and humor have carried me through many a weary day.

Mimi and I have enjoyed many a Tofino sunset since I kicked cancer’s ass.

Mimi and I found our favorite place in the world, Tofino, on the Pacific shore of Vancouver Island, and we’ve visited there six or seven times, enjoying the starfish, the whales, the bears, the fish tacos and the wild Pacific waves crashing on Cox Beach.

I made more than 30 trips to Canada, visiting every province but Newfoundland-Labrador and enjoying the vibrant cities, majestic mountains and lovely lighthouses of that charming country.

Our 2007 visit to Bryce Canyon came eight years after my first cancer diagnosis.

We enjoyed day and weekend trips to the Field of Dreams and other locations around Eastern Iowa; Chincoteague Island, Shenandoah National Park, Monticello and other locations around Washington and a pleasant weekend getaway to Acadiana while awaiting my second cancer diagnosis.

Mimi and I enjoyed several cherry blossom seasons in Washington.

Mimi and I visited our nation’s spectacular capital dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. We walked across the Memorial Bridge together; we walked around the Tidal Basin and visited the Jefferson Memorial in cherry-blossom season; we visited memorials to Lincoln, both Roosevelts, King and the veterans of World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam, as well as the Air Force and Iwo Jima memorials. We toured the Capitol, White House and Mount Vernon. We marveled at the view of Washington from Kennedy’s grave and squinted at his eternal flame from the back of the Lincoln Memorial. We browsed the Newseum, National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of American History, National Gallery of Art, National Zoo, Spy Museum (we saw a Supreme Court justice getting dinner in the cafe there) and both Air and Space Museums. We laughed at the comedy of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart in their Washington visits. We stood in line five hours to pay respects to Rosa Parks in the Capitol Rotunda (and a couple hours for Jerry Ford).

We visited Mike and Tom in their offices on Capitol Hill and Mike’s office in Minneapolis. We walked the catwalks high above the floor of the Mandalay Bay Events Center as Joe gave us a tour of his workplace.

We saw pictures and heard tales from Tom’s trips to Algeria, Ghana and Slovenia and cruises to various exotic destinations by Mike and Susie and Joe and Kim. We toasted Susie’s master’s degree and the launch of Joe and Kim’s business, Moxie Event Lighting.

We enjoyed Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers in concerts in Omaha and productions of “Wicked” at the Kennedy Center and “Spamalot” in Las Vegas.

I had never blogged or tweeted when I got my first cancer diagnosis. Now I’ve blogged more than a thousand times, tweeted more than 50,000 and I’m known in journalism more for blogging and tweeting than anything I did in my pre-cancer career.

I watched my Yankees play in both Yankee Stadiums as well as in five other ballparks, and watched other teams play in 15 more parks. I also saw my Kansas City Chiefs play (always with one or more of my sons) in four stadiums. And Mimi and I watched our Creighton Bluejays play dozens of basketball games in Omaha, St. Louis and Fairfax, Va.

We also gathered for two funerals for nephews who died too young. Tragic as those gatherings were, I’m glad I was around to hold my family tight and to honor both nephews. Part of living is sharing the loss of loved ones, and I am grateful that I was able to visit Patrick on his deathbed and to salute Brandon as the military brought his body back from Afghanistan.

Mimi and I presided at the wedding of our niece, Meg, and her husband, David.

Two generations of Buttry brothers gathered to watch the Super Bowl together in 2006.

My brothers and sons gathered in 2006 to watch the Super Bowl, two generations of Buttry brothers having fun together. (I think they might have been worried about that 2006 surgery, which came later that month.)

I helped my mother into her twilight, visiting as often as I could as she has slipped into the fog of Alzheimer’s.

This year I made it to Alaska, my 50th state, with our sons and their families, who gave us the trip as a gift. The glaciers, wildlife and family time were a highlight of my 60 years, right up there with the boys’ births and weddings and our own wedding.

My sons and I watched the Kansas City Royals play the San Francisco Giants play in the World Series 15 years after my first cancer diagnosis.

That, friends, is my bucket list. My bucket runneth over. Whatever else comes is bonus. I will grab that bonus with relish. I’m planning to dance at Tom and Ashley’s wedding next year and maybe at Julia and Madeline’s many years from now.

But if this round of cancer doesn’t go as well as the first one, I’m good to go.

I see a lot of check marks on a bucket list in this post (and they’re all interesting because the good ones are facts and the bad/sad ones are philosophy). It’s now time to develop a list of things you want to do, and store it in the cloud! The bucket is something that holds mop water, or a good thing in which to throw up! The cloud is clean, it is always above you in a fluid and enchanting way. If it’s safe for pixel storage, it is certainly a safe–and creative–place to keep all your ideas-that-turn-to-actions-or-things.

All that written, I will hold thought on your behalf—thought filled with love and healing for you and your family as you navigate this adventure in healing, reporting and maybe even passing on into a next realm (or cloud!) where the body isn’t necessary.

It’ll probably be hard to top the last 15 years of post-ass kicking, Steve, but I’m sure you’ll find a way. Soon enough, you’ll probably land a gig as a field-goal kicker for the Bears. Keep calm and kick on!

I never say these things at the right time, but I’ll say it now: Thank you for all your help and guidance over the past year. Knowing you were just an email away has been invaluable to me and to Laura. Thank you.

I love the way you put it, Steve: running up the score. I’m pretty sure you will keep doing that. I am filled with admiration for your work, of course, but even more for that simple drive to live. Live big.

[…] those skills loose on the stories of our hearts. I have been honored and touched by the response to last week’s post about my earlier and current experience with cancer. And I know Tim’s story will provide laughs and encouragement to many individuals and […]

[…] Chuck Offenburger has appeared frequently in this blog. He gave me my first job in journalism and I’ve profiled him and cheered him on in his successful treatment for lymphoma (before knowing that I’d be facing lymphoma treatment myself). […]

[…] I didn’t watch the ESPYs live last July, but I do think I heard the full Scott clip, and certainly the full speech, over the next few days. I don’t recall clearly thinking about the speech at all when, in November, I was also working on the early drafts of the post where I announced my second cancer diagnosis. […]

[…] Chemotherapy is my side project for the first half of 2015, so I have canceled speaking engagements and am curtailing other side projects. I will continue this blog (and worked on this post in the hospital), but blogging might also be sporadic. […]

[…] we usually have a friendly chat when our paths cross at conferences, which was fairly often before chemotherapy halted my travel. We also argued on this blog back in 2010 when he was on his previous […]

[…] are involved in such hires. And that takes some time. Furthermore, I was diagnosed in December with lymphoma. Even if I’d gotten the job swiftly, the talks I envisioned might have proceeded slowly, […]

[…] as well as planning to help my BYO colleagues promote our project. That was when we thought my treatment for lymphoma would conclude with a stem-cell transplant this summer. But when a delay pushed the likely […]

[…] harvest later on CaringBridge when I know more. That’s where I usually post updates on my lymphoma treatment. This post started on CaringBridge I cut and pasted the first few paragraphs to move it here when […]

[…] from teaching a regular course this semester because of my ever-changing plans for finishing my lymphoma treatment. But I enjoyed guest-teaching for a couple of colleagues early in November and had a fairly open […]

[…] that support paled in comparison to the virtual hugs I have received since my lymphoma diagnosis last December. During my treatment, which has included some setbacks I won’t repeat here, the digital […]

[…] links from my blog to posts about Dent and other members of the ’78 Yankees. Because I was pretty public about my cancer treatment, and have tweeted a lot about travel delays, people can (and do) easily make our relationships more […]

[…] was honored and uplifted by how many people encouraged me during last year’s treatment for mantle-cell lymphoma. If you were heartened in some way by my kicking-cancer’s-ass narrative, please know that I […]

[…] This pancreatic cancer is unrelated to either of my earlier major cancers, colon cancer in 1999 and mantle-cell lymphoma in 2014-15. An edited version of my blog post about Cancer 3.0 ran on the health-care site STAT. After a few […]